Pseudonym of Jane Weddell (? - ) UK fan and author who began publishing work of genre interest with "The Path to the Sun" in On Spec for Winter 2001, and who came to wider attention with her first series, the Hidden Empire sequence beginning with Principles of Angels (2008) and continuing so far to Queen of Nowhere (2013). The series is set thousands of years hence, some time after a Long Night has passed, and hints of a resurgent Galactic Empire variously affect life on various planets; the sequence is notable for its range of quasi-independent settings, the world of Principles of Angels being a moderately interesting Dystopia, while the world of volume two, Consorts of Heaven (2009), provides a Planetary Romance setting for events involving Supernatural Creatures, with political control mechanisms on Medieval Futurism lines detectable beneath the surface. The Telepathic female Alien civilization (known as the Sidhe) that had brought about the interregnum so painful for Homo sapiens is increasingly in evidence as the series proceeds, with protagonists moving at points into baroque Space Opera territory, via Faster Than Light drives working through Matter Transmission to enable hops to other galaxies, and intimations of Uplift thick in the air. Various romances fail to dominate; the series remains open-ended.

Fenn's "Liberty Bird" (in Now We Are Ten: Celebrating the First Ten Years of NewCon Press, anth 2016, ed Ian Whates) won a BSFA Award as best short fiction. [JC]

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We passed a couple of major milestones on 1st August: the SFE is now over 4.5 million words, of which John Clute’s own contribution has now exceeded 2 million. (For comparison, the 1993 second edition was 1.3 million words, and … Continue reading →

We’ve reached a couple of milestones recently. The SFE gallery of book covers now has more than 10,000 images: this one seemed appropriate for the 10,000th. Our series of slideshows of thematically linked covers has continued to grow, and Darren Nash of … Continue reading →

We’ve been talking for a while about new features to add to the SFE, and another one has gone live today: the Gallery, which collects together covers for sf books and links them back to SFE entries. To quote from … Continue reading →